This paper presents a synthesis of four case studies documenting strategies towards building gender equality through resilience projects. It draws on the experience of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) involved in the implementation of the Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters (BRACED) projects: Mercy Corps (Uganda), ActionAid (Myanmar), Concern (Sudan/Chad) and Christian Aid and King’s College London (Burkina Faso). The analysis also reflects on discussions held during a writeshop that brought together NGO practitioners, donor representatives and researchers, to examine different approaches to integrate gender and social equality as part of efforts to build communities’ resilience to climate change and disasters.

The papers seeks to document how gender inequalities manifest themselves in all four contexts affected by climate change; how gender is conceptualised in project theories of change (ToCs); the operationalisation of objectives to tackle gender inequalities; internal and external obstacles to the implementation of gender-sensitive activities; and drivers that help NGOs transform gender relations and build resilience.

The four case studies describe how disasters and climate change affect gender groups in different ways and also underscore the patriarchal social norms that disproportionately restrict women and girls’ equal access to rights and resources. The resulting inequalities are likely to undermine women and girls’ resilience, and ultimately that of their households and communities – an assumption that underpins projects’ ToCs. Hence, projects that aim to enhance people’s resilience capacities have to recognise social diversities, inequalities and their inter-sectionality. If they fail to do so, they risk further marginalising and undermining the capacities of those who lack access to decision-making or experience discrimination.

Based on lessons from NGOs’ experience, and challenges they face in the particular contexts where they operate, this papers aims to inform practitioners on how to draw on promising practices to make resilience projects inclusive and equitable. It also provides a set of recommendations to point out areas where further research is required to increase understanding of resilience to climate extremes and longer-term changes, and to suggest how donors and funding can best support efforts to build communities’ resilience.

This collection of articles examines the impact of armed conflict on women, men, and gender relations. Gender stereotypes of conflict depict women and children as powerless victims, while men are presented either as saviours of the weak and powerless, or as agents of violence and destruction. Reality is more complex. Women, girls, and boys also wage war as soldiers, often against their will. Atrocities committed against them give rise to desperate physical, mental, and material need, which reconstruction and peace initiatives must recognise and address. In addition, women need to be involved as decision makers in peace and reconstruction processes. These must founded on a vision of equality in governance and everyday social interactions, if a sustainable peace is to come about. Case studies included here come from India, Kosovo, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, and Uganda.

The dearth of knowledge about what life was like for different women and men, communities and institutions during conflict has caused many post-conflict developers to undertake reconstruction using standardised models that may not always reflect the realities of the affected populations. There is a need to engage with and understand the life experiences, transformations and social concerns of people affected by conflict before, during and after the conflict in order to develop appropriate and context embedded post-conflict reconstruction strategies. This article discusses how life histories were deployed to explore how the 20-year conflict in northern Uganda transformed people's lives. It presents how 47 men and women lived, experienced and remembered the war in northern Uganda, and the implications for health care reconstruction. By focusing on what the respondents considered major life events in their narratives of war experiences, the article shows how through using life histories, the respondents were empowered to narrate in their own voices their experiences of war; how gender and power(lessness) shaped their experiences and their ‘situatedness’ within the conflict and thereafter; and the implications this has for post-conflict health reconstruction. The life history method enabled the researchers to surmount the subjective nature of narratives of war and its after effects, permitting the researchers to construct a picture of how experiences and challenges to well-being, health and health care seeking changed through time and what needs to be done to ensure post-conflict development prioritises the multiple health care needs of those most impoverished by the war.

Against the backdrop of global and continental women, peace, and security discourses, this contribution analyses the gender and women-focused language of national action plans from four African countries (Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, and Uganda), which were drafted with a view to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325. I argue that national action plans have the potential to transcend the soft-consensus language of Security Council resolutions because they create new spaces for feminist engagement with policy and practice. The analysis reveals three discursive themes – namely, the making of “womenandchildren,” women civilising war, and making women responsible for preventing gender-based violence. The themes relate to the construction of, respectively, gender(ed) identities, security, and violence. To varying degrees, the plans reflect a combination of predominantly liberal-feminist language interspersed with some examples of critical insight. I conclude that the ambiguous nature of the messages sent out by these plans serves as a reminder that discourses are fragmented and therefore offer an opening for nuanced contextual analyses and implementation.

Many widows and orphans in get dispossessed of family land after the death of the head of household, but this could be countered by registered joint ownership of the land. Based on a study of two districts in Uganda, this paper examines the local responses, challenges and policy implications of joint ownership. Over 260 households, and a variety of key informants, were interviewed. The majority of respondents, especially women, agreed that joint ownership of family land is useful, arguing that it provides family security and enhances marital stability. Those who opposed joint ownership argued that marriage itself is unstable, and there is no trust between the spouses. In practice however, the family land is mostly male-owned. Most households do not have any ownership documents, and this is a challenge because joint ownership needs to be registered in order to be legally binding. The growing commercialization of land is also a challenge since it makes individual ownership more preferable. Joint ownership lacks strong support among both men and women, it is constrained by cultural beliefs and practices, and the institution of marriage in which it is anchored is getting weaker. Therefore in order to be effective, any policies and strategies for securing the interests of the family members in the family land must take account of these challenges.

Gender Justice, Development, and Rights reflects on the significance accorded in international development policy to rights and democracy in the post-Cold War era. Key items on the contemporary policy agenda - neo-liberal economic and social policies, democracy, and multi-culturalism - are addressed here by leading scholars and regional specialists through theoretical reflections and detailed case studies. Together they constitute a collection which casts contemporary liberalism in a distinctive light by applying a gender perspective to the analysis of political and policy processes. Case studies from Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, East-Central Europe, South and South-East Asia contribute a cross-cultural dimension to the analysis of contemporary liberalism - the dominant value system in the modern world - by examining how it both exists in and is resisted in developing and post-transition societies. (Summary from WorldCat)

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction

Maxine Molyneux and Shahra Razavi

Part I: Re-Thinking Liberal Rights And Universalism

2. Women's Capabilities And Social Justice

Martha Nussbaum

3. Gender Justice, Human Rights And Neo-Liberal Economic Policies

Diane Elson

4. Multiculturalism, Universalism And The Claims Of Democracy

Anne Phillips

Part II: Social Sector Restructuring And Social Rights

5. Political And Social Citizenship: An Examination Of The Case Of Poland

Jacqueline Heinen and Stephane Portet

6. Engendering The New Social Citizenship In Chile: Ngos And Social Provisioning Under Neo-Liberalism

This book explores the gendered dimensions of recent land governance transformations across the globe in the wake of unprecedented pressures on land and natural resources. These complex contemporary forces are reconfiguring livelihoods and impacting women’s positions, their tenure security and well-being, and that of their families.

Bringing together fourteen empirical community case studies from around the world, the book examines governance transformations of land and land-based resources resulting from four major processes of tenure change: commercial land based investments, the formalization of customary tenure, the privatization of communal lands, and post-conflict resettlement and redistribution reforms. Each contribution carefully analyses the gendered dimensions of these transformations, exploring both the gender impact of the land tenure reforms and the social and political economy within which these reforms materialize. The cases provide important insights for decision makers to better promote and design an effective gender lens into land tenure reforms and natural resource management policies. (Summary from Taylor & Francis eBooks)

Table of Contents:

Introduction

Part 1: From Farm to Firm: A Bad Deal for Women?

1. Gender, Land and Agricultural Investments in Lao PDR

2. Women and Benefit Sharing in Large Scale Land Deals: A Mining Case Study from Papua New Guinea

3. A Women's World or the Return of Men? The Gendered Impacts of Residential Tourism in Costa Rica

Part 2: From de Facto to de Jure: Formalizing Patriarchy in the Codification of Customary Tenure?

4. Cameroon's Community Forests Program and Women's Income Generation from Non-Timber Forest Products: Negative impacts and potential solutions

5. Gendered Mobilization: Women and the Politics of Indigenous Land Claims in Argentina

6. Joint Land Titles in Madagascar: The gendered outcome of a "gender neutral" land tenure reform

7. Land Titling and Women's Decision-Making in West Bengal

Part 3: From Common Property to Private Holdings: A Tragedy for the Commoners?

Operation and maintenance of communally owned water sources in Uganda still pose challenges despite the devolution of water management from the state to user communities. Using a mixed-methods approach and a gender-sensitive collective action analytical framework, this article quantifies the role of women in drinking-water governance and identifies barriers to women’s participation. The findings show that women not only are more willing to contribute but have also stated higher actual contribution than their male counterparts. The article outlines the institutional and individual attributes constraining women’s effective participation in water management and suggests how to enhance women’s participation in water governance. We argue that a strategy built on water users’ collective action in Uganda has to be built on women’s participation through effective rules and monitoring mechanisms, as well as on long-term sensitization and awareness creation on gender stereotypes that hitherto hinder women’s participation.

Gender budgeting is an initiative to use fiscal policy and administration to address gender inequality and women's advancement. A large number of sub-Saharan African countries have adopted gender budgeting. Two countries that have achieved notable success in their efforts are Uganda and Rwanda, both of which have integrated gender-oriented goals into budget policies, programs, and processes in fundamental ways. Other countries have made more limited progress in introducing gender budgeting into their budget-making. Leadership by the ministry of finance is critical for enduring effects, although nongovernmental organizations and parliamentary bodies in sub-Saharan Africa play an essential role in advocating for gender budgeting.

Armed conflict and civil wars are the main cause of refugees in the Great Lakes Region of Eastern Africa. Forced migration into alien refugee settings exacerbates gender inequalities and increases the vulnerability of women and girls. The main objective of the study was to gain a deeper understanding of gender relations, livelihood security and reproductive health among refugees in Uganda with a particular focus on women. The research design was descriptive and exploratory in nature and the methodology was primarily qualitative. The main findings were that refugee policies and gender relations have an immense influence on human reproduction, reproductive health and livelihood security. Although UNHCR has formulated gender sensitive policies, their implementation in rural settlements remains gender neutral. In addition, the strategic needs of women refugees are not catered for. The study concludes that there is a discrepancy between the international and national policies and what is on the ground. (ResearchGate)

Annotation:

Table of Contents:

1. Background and Rationale for the Study2. Theoretical and Conceptual Perspectives3. Research Questions and Methodology4. The History and Management of Refugees and Displacement in Uganda5. The International and National Health Policies6. Ministries, Organizations and Programmes Dealing in Reproductive Health Issues7. The Study Area and ‘Host Environment’8. Gender Relations, Livelihood Security and Reproductive Health: Discussion of Findings and Experiences from Rhino Camp Refugee Settlement 9. Gender Relations, Livelihood Security and Reproductive Health: Discussion of Findings and Experiences from Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement10. Conclusions